THE AiMERiICAN BOTANIST. 83 



disk flowers, also, are brownish red. Many variations of 

 coloring in the ray flowers occur. Some are all yellow but in 

 most the red is very conspicuous. Normally the rays are flat 

 and three parted at the tips, but in the editor's garden, there 

 has appeared for the past two summers a form in v;hich the 

 ray flowers are replaced by large tubular flowers three- four-or 

 five-parted, Vv'ith yellow borders and deep red throats. The de- 

 viation is in sharp contrast to the usual form and makes the 

 variants look like a different species. After one has cultivated 

 the wild flowers a while, he loses a great deal of respect for the 

 minute distinctions of the systematist. In the herbarium it 

 may appear that a hard and fast line bounds each species, but 

 in nature it is not so. 



Variations in Composites. — Most persons, whether 

 botanists or not, can recognize the inflorescence of the great 

 composite family at sight. To the uninitiated a dandelion or 

 daisy may be a single flower instead of the compact bunch of 

 flowers with which the botanist is familiar but the general ar- 

 rangement is such that an unfamiliar member of the family is 

 recognized at once. But while a fundamental type is discern- 

 ible in all these flower heads, this is so overlaid and modified by 

 variations of different kinds that the diversity exhibited by 

 nearly twelve hundred species is easily within the limits. At 

 the outset we find the family naturally falling into several lesser 

 groups according as their flowers are all tubular, all strap 

 shaped or a combination of the two. In our southern states 

 and elsewhere in the tropics the section with heads of tubular 

 flowers again divides into species with regular florets and 

 others with two lipped corollas. The members of the compos- 

 itae are practically never double in the sense that we speak of 

 a double rose or butter-cup. All double composites are 

 derived from species that normally have disk and ray 

 flowers that differ in form. In such, the disk flowd's 

 may take on the form of the rays, and give us sucii 



